Karen Williams murder accused says evidence against him is irreconcilable and he cannot be found guilty of cold-case crime

THE man accused of murdering Karen Williams cannot be found guilty of the infamous cold case, his lawyers claim, because the evidence against him is irreconcilable.

Nikola Novakovich, centre, during the court’s trip to view locations at Coober Pedy. Picture: Greg Higgs.

THE man accused of murdering Karen Williams cannot be found guilty of the infamous cold case, his lawyers claim, because the evidence against him is irreconcilable.

On Thursday, counsel for Nikola Novakovich urged the Supreme Court to find him not guilty of murdering Miss Williams at Coober Pedy in 1990.

Marie Shaw, QC, said all of the prosecution’s key witnesses claimed Novakovich had confessed to them, but had given conflicting accounts of how he allegedly committed the crime.

“According to one, he shot Miss Williams, according to another he stabbed her while raping her,” she said.

“These two transactions, to use that term, cannot be on the same occasion ... they cannot be causative of death in a way that’s reconcilable.”

Miss Williams’ disappearance is one of South Australia’s most infamous cold cases, prompting repeated and intensive searches of mine shafts in and around the town.

Prosecutors allege Novakovich, 44, killed Miss Williams, 16, because she had witnessed him and another man robbing an opal miner just days earlier.

Her body has never been recovered.

A witness has claimed that when Novakovich raped her, years after Miss Williams’ disappearance, he called her “Karen” and admitted responsibility for her death.

Another witness claims Novakovich asked him if DNA could be sourced from a body after 20 years and, when told it could be, confessed to the crime.

However, a former Aboriginal healthcare worker has claimed one of her patients made a deathbed confession that he was the murderer.

Defence counsel, meanwhile, have claimed the prosecution’s key witness — Novakovich’s former friend, Aleksander Radosavljevic — murdered Miss Williams.

They insist the witness accounts are inadmissable.

On Thursday, Ms Shaw said the evidence of the witnesses could not be “more acutely different”.

“The circumstances that are alleged to have caused death are so disparate as to be irreconcilable,” she said.

Prosecutor Jim Pearce, QC, disagreed.

“The bottom line of the evidence, at its very lowest level, is that the accused has — to all the witnesses — made admissions that he caused the death of Miss Williams,” he said.

“Certainly he has given different versions, but at its basic level it’s an admission to an element of homicide.

“Your Honour might take it that he wouldn’t lightly admit to the death of another unless it was true.”

Mr Pearce said that, despite the lack of a body, Miss Williams had been murdered and not simply “gone walkabout”.

He conceded there was no record of her as a missing person, but argued that was of little weight.

“I think there was an article in the paper recently about a journalist whose school records said he never went there,” he said.

“It shows that, sometimes, the records can be misleading.”

Justice Tim Stanley is expected to retire on Friday to deliberate, and will return his verdict at a later date.

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